Force Still Needed, Relief Agencies Say

GISENYI, Rwanda — As the flood of returning refugees tailed off at this border post in northern Rwanda on Monday, concern was shifting to refugees stranded farther south in Zaire amid uncertainty over plans for an international rescue force.

With just a few stragglers appearing at the border, aid workers and other observers were questioning the need for the planned Canadian-led multinational intervention force to help refugees at camps in Zaire, who are now returning home to their villages in Rwanda.

More than 500,000 refugees had come across the border here as of Monday evening, according to UN officials. Perhaps another half-million people, however, remain unaccounted for in Zaire, where they face hunger and disease in refugee camps or in the wilderness.

In Washington, the Clinton administration breathed a sigh of relief--perhaps prematurely--as the dramatic homecoming by Rwandan refugees created an impression that the worst of the humanitarian crisis had passed.

The United States is reconsidering plans announced just last Friday to contribute about 1,000 ground troops to secure the Goma airport in Zaire, just across the border from Gisenyi, as a base for relief operations. President Clinton also promised a further 3,000 to 4,000 support troops to help with the logistics of the proposed multinational rescue mission.

The planning for the multinational force assumed that military pressure would be needed to ensure that Hutu militias did not block relief efforts in Zaire. The militias, though, fled last week under attack from Zairian Tutsi rebels, enabling refugees from the large Magunga camp to return to their homes in Rwanda.

The Pentagon is redirecting its planning toward helping refugees inside Rwanda with preparations for flying in relief supplies to the capital, Kigali, and other logistical support activities that would be less risky than in Zaire.

The question of operating from the Goma airport remains open. A formal decision about the U.S. role is expected to emerge from talks Thursday in Germany among military and relief officials from the more than a dozen nations signed up for the multinational force.

"There's not yet a plan, partly because everything has changed in the last three or four days," said State Department spokesman Glyn Davies.

Canada said Monday it wants to proceed with the emergency relief operation to help Rwandan refugees still facing hunger and disease in the region south of Zaire's Lake Kivu, where they have been cut off from aid since fighting broke out in mid-October. So far, little is known about their fate.

United Nations officials said they had some assurance from rebel commanders that those refugees might be allowed to leave later this week through the border towns of Bukavu and Uvira.

Meanwhile, as the stream of returned refugees pushed closer toward their homes in Rwanda, frustrated aid workers engaged in shouting matches with each other over their inability to get relief to the refugees. Their problems reflected the generally chaotic situation and the Rwandan government's insistence that the refugees be pushed home quickly.

Western relief officials said that there is adequate food and other supplies stockpiled in Rwanda and nearby countries but that it is a logistical challenge to get the supplies to the enormous number of returning refugees. Officials said the size and speed of the repatriation may be unprecedented.

Determined not to let the refugees settle down anywhere that could become a long-term encampment, government officials forcefully evacuated more than 350 people out of a transit camp operated at the border by the International Federation of the Red Cross. They were also slowly processing aid agencies' requests to work in the country.

"They don't want us setting up anything that looks permanent," said Samantha Bolton, a spokeswoman for Doctors Without Borders. "We're concerned that a lot of people won't reach their communes for another two days and medically we're seeing it in our way stations."

Bolton said the number of reported cholera cases in Goma rose to 50 Monday, and more than 1,000 people were treated for dehydration. A spokeswoman for the UN's World Food Program said her agency had been told there were 200 cases of cholera at the Gisenyi hospital. The Red Cross reported that one woman died at the border.

On the road, the refugees continued to complain of hunger and fatigue, patting their stomachs as they passed anyone who looked like a relief worker.

Most of them looked surprisingly sturdy, but among those needing help was 8-year-old Beatrice Ntashamaje, who collapsed on a burlap sack in a drainage ditch at the side of the road about 12 miles south of Gisenyi.

"It's hunger," said her cousin, Marguerite Muzawayesu, 20. "She disappeared for a few days, and we don't know how long it's been since she's eaten. We just found her this morning and she was crying."